Next Generation Vaccine - "The Human Vaccine Project"

The vaccines are one of the greatest success in the history of medicine. Vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular diseases. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease causing micro-organism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins or one of its surface proteins. The agent stimulates the body's immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these micro-organisms that it later encounters. But the past strategies are not succeed against the global diseases such as AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Because, the pathogens evade immune detection and possess extensive genetic variability. Such limitations of animal models to predict human immune response to vaccines and low success rate for vaccine development suggest the new paradigms must be implemented for accelerating vaccine development.

The genomic-based antigen discovery is being exploited for the design of vaccines against multiple bacterial pathogens. Similarly, the interrogation of memory B cells led to the identification of broadly neutralizing antibodies against influenza and other viruses. There are now being exploited as tools to design highly conserved epitope-based vaccines. Advances in adjuvant and vector delivery technologies are providing novel approaches for immune potentiation of vaccines. The translation of advances into vaccines remains impeded by major gaps in our knowledge of human immune responses. 

The successful development of vaccines against the major global diseases for which the vaccines do not exist currently would be transformational for public health, with huge benefits across society. The new human immunology based clinical research is established for the next generation vaccine development, with the goal of elucidating and more effectively generating vaccine-induced protective immune responses. 

The development of next generation vaccines will be effective against the major global killers such as AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other infectious diseases. The "Human Vaccine Project" could enable more successful vaccine development against allergies, autoimmune diseases and cancers. Also provide a foundation for vaccine development against new and emerging diseases.

Reference: Wayne C. Koff et al., (2013), "Accelerating Next-Generation Vaccine development for Global disease prevention" Science, 340, 1064-1072.